Is Internal Talent Acquisition the Hardest Role in Recruitment?

The recruitment market in 2024 has been tumultuous to say the least, we’ve seen swathes of cuts all across the recruitment sector with some companies removing their entire TA teams, some recruitment businesses shrinking headcount by up to 90% if not evaporating altogether and barely anyone saying they’ve had a “good year”.

It’s got me thinking, what are the “easy” and “hard” areas of this market? My personal hell would be in R2R (recruiting recruiters), I hear enough horror stories from experienced R2Rs to make me steer well clear of this area. I’m slightly biased but absolutely love agency recruitment. In our market areas it’s an opportunity to get involved in the next generation of technology, put together innovative staffing solutions and hopefully do some good along the way!

This leaves our friends in the internal Talent Acquisition teams at our clients, unfortunately, there seems to be a feeling from some in the market that they’re the enemy of external recruiters and that their failure is the success of externals and vice versa. I do not agree.

I do however feel they have one of the hardest jobs in recruitment. A constant state of overload (I’ve seen some internals having over 100 live vacancies on their desk at once), potentially thousands of direct applicant candidates to go through, most of which aren’t relevant (thanks LinkedIn quick apply!). Hiring managers screaming and jumping up and down because they think their vacancy is the most important (it is, but only to them) and a thousand recruiters hawking CVs at your hiring managers and actively trying to cut you out of the process (poor practice!).

Oh, and if you don’t fill a ridiculous number of roles, you’re toast. Or maybe even if you do, or maybe if the market turns, you might be walked out of the building too.

What happens if your hiring managers are unrealistic? Or the company doesn’t pay attractive enough salaries? Or if the reputation in the market isn’t great?

In agency recruitment, we consult the client. If they don’t listen then they’re replaced by another client who will listen to market feedback. Sure the internal TAs can do this too, in fact, some of them do an absolutely incredible job of this. 

But what happens when the managers or the business don’t listen? It’s like being stuck in a phone box with an angry bear, you can’t get away, you’ve just got to wait for the pain. Internal TA is a tough gig at the best of times, let alone in the market we’ve endured over the past 18 months.

Looking at the market for the next 18 months, I can’t imagine it will get any easier either. The sentiment at Electronica & Semicon was unbelievably positive despite the hardships that everyone in the industry has faced in some way, shape or form recently. The positive sentiment comes with lots of promises and optimism about 2025, and almost every senior-level person I spoke to about the semiconductor industry said the same thing; hiring will ramp up in 2025.

So, when the market is tough, internal TA is tough, and when the market is great, internal TA is still tough. Sorry, everyone, there’s no getting away from it; Internal TA is consistently the hardest job in the recruitment industry come rain or shine.

If you disagree, let me know, but from where I’m standing, they don’t get the respect and recognition they deserve.